Mysterious Fire Alarm Nearly Derails Jew Pond Vote

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With the eyes of the world set on their little town for the first and possibly last time ever, residents of Mont Vernon, New Hampshire gathered at a town meeting last night to vote on whether a tiny body of water known officially and unofficially as Jew Pond would be given a new, non-Jew-referencing name. But not without some last-minute drama! Clearly, there were forces in Mont Vernon willing to do anything to keep that name in place, including maybe pulling a fire alarm. As theAP reported last night:

A fire alarm has delayed a vote on whether to rename a fishing and skating pond that’s been called Jew Pond since the1920s.

More than 100 residents of rural Mont Vernon were preparing to vote when the alarm went off shortly after 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Initial reports were that there was no smoke or other indications of afire.

This desperate last-ditch effort, however, was ultimately but a minor bump in the road on the way to Jew Pond’s demise. After regrouping, the town voted overwhelmingly, 104-33, to petition the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to finally change the decades-old name of this muddy, anti-Semitic hole in the ground. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward generic pondnames.